Les Thorne was with us for the day and his style has not changed much since his last visit, still giving as much attention to detail as before and a bit of advice to those new to turning rather than assume we all know everything.

His first project of the day was to be a lidded pot but the lid was to be bigger than the base!! He changed the rule of thumb proportion of 1/3—2/3 and went for 2/5—3/5 for this piece.
His choice of wood was ash and he turned the blank to round and then cut a wide groove to form a location for the two halves and a spigot at each end for chucking purposes.
Les then parted off through the wide groove leaving just a witness mark at the base end leaving the top in the lathe. This was hollowed out, not too thin and leaving the wall of the previously turned groove to fit into the base.
He then finished the inside after sanding with first spray lacquer and then wax polish.
It was then removed from the lathe and the base mounted. This was hollowed out to the witness line and then carefully cleaned up to give straight sides and flat base and a tight fit on the lid. Or maybe the lid was a tight fit in the base.
Yep. That way round.

Next the whole thing was turned and the top tapered down towards the end and finished up rather like an old fashioned milk bottle.
Remember them?
Next Les carved a lot of the neck away using a rotary rasp in a dremel tool leaving a shape a bit like the cowl on an oast house.
Next he attacked it with a small rotary burr going all over it leaving it looking as though the tracks of a very large wood worm that had been roaming around under the surface had been exposed.
Finally he sprayed it with ebonising lacquer, lightly sanded this and then dabbed other colours on in patches and polished the whole thing to look bootiful.
The final touch was to sand inside the base to loosen the fit of the lid. He likes them loose.

The second and last piece today was to be a bowl treated in the same way as the pot but finished with ebonising spray lacquer, sanded and then coated with liming wax and buffed with a cloth.
The choice of timber here was a beautiful piece of olive ash!! To be trashed with a rotary burr?
Les turned the bowl in the usual way and when he had finished the back and sanded it to a fine finish he attacked it with the rotary burr to create the giant woodworm effect.
Next he reversed it and hollowed it out leaving quite a wide rim and a fairly thick wall. With the rotary burr he carried the texture across the face and a little way down the inside.
Next he finish turned the inside and slightly undercut below the texture to give it a crisp edge.
The finish on this after sanding was to be sprayed on ebonising lacquer followed by liming wax and buffed with a piece of cloth.
The ripple of the wood was not entirely lost because it was highly visible in the centre of the bowl.

Les has given both pieces to the club to be used as raffle prizes for whichever charities we are supporting.

A REMINDER ABOUT THE NEXT MEETING

We have taken a stand at the SE Show at the Detling Show Ground and will be there on Friday 8th March and Saturday 9th March SO WE WILL NOT BE AT MILSTEAD for the next meeting. Instead we will treat the Saturday at Detling as our club meeting so please let’s have a good show of members on the day. We will have one lathe working and two display/sales tables so if you have anything to sell please bring it along.
We attended this a couple of years ago and we gained a couple of members following the show. We missed it last year because it clashed with our club day and several people felt we should have been there so this year we will be.

TRIP TO YANDLES

The coach pick up has been changed to accommodate those who don’t like getting up too early.
The pick up at Macanade will now be 7.00 am
and at the Mid Kent shopping centre at 7.30 am

The costs are £18 to members and their wives/partners and to non-members the cost is £27.
The coach is a 33 seater and at present there are several spare seats although at this stage we don’t know how many non-members are coming along.

Notice board

FOR SALE Record DML36SH woodturning lathe. This has been modified to include a speed genie variable speed unit and also fitted with solid bed bars in place of the tubular ones. Also includes a bowl turning attachment. £250 O N O